Why Writing For A Target Audience Is Horrible Advice
As a new writer on the Medium platform, I catch myself reading many, many, many, posts regarding how to be successful here, which breaks down to being told how to write. I keep reading advice that is telling me to write with my reader's interests in mind, but then I realized I don’t have any readers. That realization made me further realize that that theory is flawed and is bad creative advice. It’s not our job, as writers, to cater to our fan base. It’s our job as writers to weave our words together into a tale that tells our truth in a way that we can walk away from when the telling is complete, satisfied that we did the best we could. Writing with a target audience in mind is whore’s work…pimping out your art in some mass-pleasing sanitized public service announcement is not what we were built to do.
When I go onto this or any other forum of its type, I don’t do so because someone has managed to write up yet another pop piece that is the literary equivalent to baby food; tasteless yet not actively offensive, lacking flavor and spice—something that fills you yet could never feel satisfied or sated after consuming. I don’t want to read these fluff pieces that nobody really gives a shit about, including you. I want to read your pain. I want to taste your frustrations, your loss, your unadulterated joy. I want to experience the raw, nerve-wracked, unrelatable angst-filled misery that you have no other recourse BUT to write about. I want to see where your truths and mine intersect and where they don’t.
I write because I am an artist and because I have no other choice if I want to stay sane and alive. I write, not to appease the herd, but to incense the other artists hidden in amongst it. I leave the mind-numbing, crowd-pleasing verbal porridge for the rest of you to serve up.
[image error]Why Writing For A Target Audience Is Horrible Advice was originally published in CRY Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
